Aside

View this CV online with links at nickstrayer.me/cv/

Contact

Language Skills

Main

Bryan Acton

I have made visualizations viewed by hundreds of thousands of people1, sped up query times for 25 terabytes of data by an average of 4,800 times2, and built packages for R3 that let you do magic4.

Education

PhD, Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Blacksburg, VA

2020 - 2016

  • Dissertaton: Using Agent-Based Modeling to Test and Integrate Process-Oriented Perspectives of Leadership Emergence
  • Summa Cum Laude

M.S., Psychology

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Blacksburg, VA

2016 - 2014

  • Thesis: Working in Harmony: The Impact of Personality on the Short- and Long-Run Dynamics of Team Cohesion

B.S., Psychology (Minors: Business, Philosophy)

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

North Adams, MA

2013 - 2009

  • Honors Program
  • Summa Cum Laude

Research Experience

Post Doctoral Research Associate

Durham University Business School

Durham, UK

2021 - 2020

  • Incorporated d3.js to the company’s main software platform.

Lab Coordinator and Graduate Research Assistant

Interface of Leadership and Teams Lab (PI: Dr. Roseanne Foti)

Virginia Tech

2019 - 2016

  • Primarily working with large EHR and Biobank datasets.

Publications

I regularly blog about data science and visualization on my blog LiveFreeOrDichotomize.5

Acton, B. P., Braun, M. T., & Foti, R. J. (2020). Built for unity: Assessing the impact of team composition on team cohesion trajectories. Journal of Business and Psychology, 35(6), 751–766. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-019-09654-7
Acton, B. P., Foti, R. J., Lord, R. G., & Gladfelter, J. A. (2019). Putting emergence back in leadership emergence: A dynamic, multilevel, process-oriented framework. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(1), 145–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.07.002
Hansbrough, T. K., Lord, R. G., Schyns, B., Foti, R. J., Liden, R. C., & Acton, B. P. (2020). Do you remember? Rater memory systems and leadership measurement. The Leadership Quarterly, 101455. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101455

Teaching Experience

I am passionate about education. I believe that no topic is too complex if the teacher is empathetic and willing to think about new methods of approaching task.

Javascript for Shiny Users

RStudio::conf 2020

N/A

2020

  • Served as TA for two day workshop on how to leverage Javascript in Shiny applications

Data Visualization Best Practices

DataCamp

N/A

2019 - 2019

  • Designed from bottom up course to teach best practices for scientific visualizations.
  • Uses R and ggplot2.
  • In top 10% on platform by popularity.

Advanced Statistical Learning and Inference

Vanderbilt Biostatistics Department

Nashville, TN

2018 - 2017

  • TA and lectured
  • Topics covered from penalized regression to boosted trees and neural networks
  • Highest level course offered in department

Advanced Statistical Computing

Vanderbilt Biostatistics Department

Nashville, TN

2018 - 2018

  • TA and lectured
  • Covered modern statistical computing algorithms
  • 4th year PhD level class

Statistical Computing in R

Vanderbilt Biostatistics Department

Nashville, TN

2017 - 2017

  • TA and lectured
  • Graduate level class

Industry Experience

I have worked in a variety of roles ranging from journalist to software engineer to data scientist. I like collaborative environments where I can learn from my peers.

Software Engineer

RStudio

Remote

Current - 2020

  • Helping make programming web applications with R easier and more beautiful on the Shiny team

Data Journalist - Graphics Department

New York Times

New York, New York

2016 - 2016

  • Reporter with the graphics desk covering topics in science, politics, and sport.




Selected Press (About)

Great paper? Swipe right on the new ‘Tinder for preprints’ app6

Science

N/A

2017 - 2017

  • Story of the app Papr7 made with Jeff Leek and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan.

Swipe right for science: Papr app is ‘Tinder for preprints’8

Nature News

N/A

2017 - 2017

  • Second press article for app Papr.

The Deeper Story in the Data9

University of Vermont Quarterly

N/A

2016 - 2016

  • Story on my path post graduation and the power of narrative.



Selected Press (By)

The Great Student Migration10

The New York Times

N/A

2016 - 2016

  • Most shared and discussed article from the New York Times for August 2016.

Wildfires are Getting Worse, The New York Times11

The New York Times

N/A

2016 - 2016

  • GIS analysis and modeling of fire patterns and trends
  • Data in collaboration with NASA and USGS

Who’s Speaking at the Democratic National Convention?12

The New York Times

N/A

2016 - 2016

  • Data scraped from CSPAN records to figure out who talked and past conventions.

Who’s Speaking at the Republican National Convention?13

The New York Times

N/A

2016 - 2016

  • Used same data scraping techniques as Who’s Speaking at the Democratic National Convention?

A Trail of Terror in Nice, Block by Block14

The New York Times

N/A

2016 - 2016

  • Led research effort to put together story of 2016 terrorist attack in Nice, France in less than 12 hours.
  • Work won Silver medal at Malofiej 2017, and gold at Society of News and Design.

Posters, and Talks

Building a software package in tandem with machine learning methods research can result in both more rigorous code and more rigorous research

ENAR 2020

N/A

2020

  • Invited talk in Human Data Interaction section.
  • How and why building an R package can benefit methodological research

Stochastic Block Modeling in R, Statistically rigorous clustering with rigorous code15

RStudio::conf 2020

N/A

2020

  • Invited talk about new sbmR package16.
  • Focus on how software development and methodological research can improve both benefit when done in tandem.

PheWAS-ME: A web-app for interactive exploration of multimorbidity patterns in PheWAS17

Bioinformatics

N/A

2020

  • Manuscript detailing application for the exploration of multimorbidity patterns in PheWAS analyses
  • See landing page18 for more information.

Charge Reductions Associated with Shortening Time to Recovery in Septic Shock19

Chest

N/A

2019 - 2019

  • Authored with Wesley H. Self, MD MPH; Dandan Liu, PhD; Stephan Russ, MD, MPH; Michael J. Ward, MD, PhD, MBA; Nathan I. Shapiro, MD, MPH; Todd W. Rice, MD, MSc; Matthew W. Semler, MD, MSc.

Multimorbidity Explorer | A shiny app for exploring EHR and biobank data20

RStudio::conf 2019

N/A

2019 - 2019

  • Contributed Poster. Authored with Yaomin Xu.

Taking a network view of EHR and Biobank data to find explainable multivariate patterns21

Vanderbilt Biostatistics Seminar Series

N/A

2019 - 2019

  • University wide seminar series.

Patient-specific risk factors independently influence survival in Myelodysplastic Syndromes in an unbiased review of EHR records

Under-Review (copy available upon request.)

N/A

2019

  • Bayesian network analysis used to find novel subgroups of patients with Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS).
  • Analysis done using method built for my dissertation.

Patient specific comorbidities impact overall survival in myelofibrosis

Under-Review (copy available upon request.)

N/A

2019

  • Bayesian network analysis used to find robust novel subgroups of patients with given genetic mutations.
  • Analysis done using method built for my dissertation.

R timelineViz: Visualizing the distribution of study events in longitudinal studies

Under-Review (copy available upon request.)

N/A

2018 - 2018

  • Authored with Alex Sunderman of the Vanderbilt Department of Epidemiology.

Continuous Classification using Deep Neural Networks22

Vanderbilt Biostatistics Qualification Exam

N/A

2017 - 2017

  • Review of methods for classifying continuous data streams using neural networks
  • Successfully met qualifying examination standards

Asymmetric Linkage Disequilibrium: Tools for Dissecting Multiallelic LD

Journal of Human Immunology

N/A

2015 - 2015

  • Authored with Richard Single, Vanja Paunic, Mark Albrecht, and Martin Maiers.

An Agent Based Model of Mysis Migration23

International Association of Great Lakes Research Conference

N/A

2015 - 2015

  • Authored with Brian O’Malley, Sture Hansson, and Jason Stockwell.

Declines of Mysis diluviana in the Great Lakes

Journal of Great Lakes Research

N/A

2015 - 2015

  • Authored with Peter Euclide and Jason Stockwell.